Tony Tulathimutte

SymSys 205 – Response Paper #2 – Simulation in Philosophy

            In class we discussed Baudrillard’s classifications of simulation and their ramifications. In general Baudrillard takes a dire view of valuing simulated experiences above or equal to reality; as he says, they are “presented with transparent precision, but totally lacking substance, having been derealized and hyperrealized”. I posited that this is because he believes that simulation does not possess the intrinsic value of the experiences or objects they seek to replicate. This may be true of many things: eating a simulated sandwich will not nourish you, though your sensory experience of it is identical to the real thing. Nor is a precisely simulated wife who behaves in every manner identical to your deceased wife valuable, for it was the real wife’s capacity to sincerely understand and reciprocate your affection that made her important to you. However, I maintain that Baudrillard’s complaint is an overgeneralization, and that there are many simulations capable of effectively replicating an experience without loss of “substance”, or what is valuable to the user.

            The Zimbardo experiment is a good example of an experience whose intensity is undiminished even with foreknowledge of the simulation. In Zimbardo’s prison experiment, every participant began with full knowledge of the inconsequentiality of their circumstances: that they had committed no crime, that all other participants were just participants, and that the entire process was a simple reenactment – even the threat of physical violence was removed. Nevertheless, the evident trauma that the participants suffered demonstrated that mere circumstances can profoundly influence behavior and self-perception in ways demonstrably similar to “the real thing”.

A more interesting question now is not whether simulations can possess value, but which simulations are valuable, and why. Someone in class raised the notion of “aura” – a seemingly non-physical quality underlying real objects. In discussion, we hashed out what might constitute an aura, relating it to such familiar constructs as “sentimental value” and “information”. Now, these are quite different concepts: the latter is capable of being reduced to and described by 1’s and 0’s, while the former seems to be inexpressible by formal means. As a result, a simulation is worthless in terms of replicating sentimental value in a real object (e.g. a family heirloom, a pet cat, a wife), but it is quite effective as a substitute for informative purposes (e.g. surgical simulators, mp3’s).

Evaluating a simulation becomes much more difficult when the notions of information and sentiment appear to overlap; for instance, a military simulator is not only a procedural simulation, but it also represents a situation charged with emotion and ethical ramifications. Disentangling information from sentiment is impossible when the simulation seeks to elicit an emotional response from the user by way of information: the Zimbardo and Milgram experiments both rely on the creation of a convincing context and situation (information) to induce a certain sentiment in the user. And I believe this is the true problem with simulated experiences; it is easy to mistake the emotions artificially induced by the information in a simulation with authentic sentiment for the actual thing being represented. When one feels sentiment for the informative content of an mp3, the emotion is genuine in a sense, but it would be a mistake to think that it is exactly the same as the sentiment one would have for a record, CD, or live performance. This confusion might have the consequence of influencing one’s judgment of the object of representation, displacing one’s sentiment for the thing-in-itself with the sentiment one has felt for its simulation, a confusion which bears potentially negative consequences.